


According To My Bond

by ellen_fremedon



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: F/M, pre-OotP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-11-01
Updated: 2002-11-01
Packaged: 2017-10-01 23:24:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellen_fremedon/pseuds/ellen_fremedon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"When she was dear to us, we did hold her so;  But now her price is fallen."</p><p>Written for the Restricted Section het smut challenge, while under the influence of a very bad cold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	According To My Bond

**Author's Note:**

> This story owes a debt to a Polyjuice discussion in Tillytilly's lj. A suggestion of Erica's led, by circuitous routes, to the title. And many, many thanks are due to Halimede for her most perceptive comments on the first draft.
> 
> I am never, ever writing Voldemort POV again.

MacNair had brought the girl in, snatched her from a snowy Hogsmeade alleyway not knowing her name, only that her robes proclaimed her a Hogwarts student and a Gryffindor. So, at least, he was told, when Lucius Malfoy-- Wormtail in tow, scraping and agreeing-- interrupted his meditations and proposed a better use for her.

"She's done it once before," Lucius said, "Or would have if Potter hadn't interfered." A cell door thudded, away down the corridor, and MacNair returned without the girl. Malfoy paid him no attention. "She could make you strong again."

"So you have said, Lucius." He didn't remember, of course. The self he'd preserved in a diary once was nearly four years dead, to the world. Deader still to him: even in his own memory the proud, hot-tempered sixteen-year-old he had been, and the child he had grown from-- everything he'd been and done before the spells, the potions, the sealing of the first of death's many doors-- were almost impossibly distant. He remembered, but it was a memory of another life.

Macnair ran his thumb along the crescent blade of his silver knife. Lucius tried another tack. "You can strike a heavy blow through this girl, My Lord. Against Arthur Weasley, and the rest of his wretched brood." There was the old grudge; he had been waiting for it to come up. "Against Dumbledore, once he learns that we took her from right under his crooked nose. Against Potter."

"Potter." He leaned back, considering. "Has he had her?"

"Draco says not, My Lord."

"Then why should she not go to MacNair's blade? Her connections to our enemies are fortuitous, it is true, but the old fool and his cronies will surely be just as devastated when they learn how she has nourished me. And I grow tired of my weakness, Lucius."

It had taken the blood of three virgins, but his flesh had at last been restored-- or rather brought for the first time, this new cauldron-born body-- to some semblance of normalcy. Color in his skin, flesh on his bones. Not yet to full health and vigor; less still to anything that would withstand the painful alchemies that had once transformed his first body into something more than base mortal flesh. That would take time. More blood, more virgins, more spells.

Or if Lucius was right, perhaps only one.

"My Lord, the girl is more powerful than she seems, My Lord." This from Wormtail, who had heard the girl's own account, and Potter's, in the Gryffindor dormitories while in rat shape. "My Lord's image could hold a wand, and do simple spellwork--"

"--even as the girl still breathed. So you have said."

Wormtail persisted. "My Lord, if even four years ago she had enough power--"

"--enough power to resist." MacNair cut him off, directing his words to Malfoy. "Strenuously. As Pettigrew has also said." He hefted his knife. "In case you've forgotten, Lucius, the Ancillaius is a two-person spell."

Malfoy smiled, too slowly and too smugly; he was forgetting his place. "Oh, I think Miss Weasley can be made to perform her end of it, willingly enough."

"Under Imperius?" MacNair snorted. "Won't work."

"As I am sure Lucius is aware." His servants started, warned by his tone. Quarrels among the Death Eaters were nothing new, but they were not to be carried on in their Master's presence. His long absence had allowed a number of new rifts to form, new power games to begin. He disliked it, but while he was still weak, even less than mortal, he tolerated it.

Time to change that. "What do you propose, Lucius? Make it brief, before I send Walden to finish what he has begun." At my bidding, he didn't add, nor needed to.

Lucius reached into his robe and drew out a knitted wool cap-- raveling red yarn, with earflaps, and a gold tassel at the top. "She was wearing this, when Walden brought her in." He plucked something off the cap's inner surface and held it up: a hair. "Shorter than the girl's own," he said. "Coarser, too." He held the cap out to Wormtail. "I don't suppose you'd know which brother she might have borrowed this--" he gave it a slight shake-- "garment from?"

The Dark Lord reached out and took the hair from Malfoy's hand. Red, almost Gryffindor scarlet, and gold in the torchlight. "Lucius, your plan interests me." He stood, suddenly enough to make Wormtail jump. "Walden, guard the girl. Lucius, Wormtail, with me."

They descended to the laboratory, hidden behind a false wall in the lowest level of Malfoy's sub-dungeons. In the old days, Severus had kept rows of cauldrons always simmering here. The workroom was still there, and Snape had used it on occasion, but he no longer trusted Snape with the run of the place. Still, in one corner a few cauldrons, tended by young Malfoy, still bubbled constantly: there was Polyjuice, ready to use.

Lucius had bragged about his whelp's prowess with potions, until he had learned of Snape's disfavor in his Master's eyes, and stopped speaking of Draco and potions in the same sentence whenever possible. Still, his boasts had not been completely untrue. Draco's Polyjuice was not up to Severus's standard-- there were thick lumps, and Wormtail gagged, spilling a great clot of it onto his hastily-transfigured plain black robe-- but still it worked as it should: Wormtail's hands began to lengthen, then his spine and his limbs, and then his face, until he stood eye-to-eye with his Master, looking down a boy's long freckled nose.

Lucius handed him a mirror. "Ron. The youngest boy." Wormtail turned his head, examining his face from all angles.

"And your erstwhile master. How fortunate."

Lucius twirled his wand. "Indeed. You should find it a simple enough role to play." There was a clear note of warning in his voice.

Wormtail swallowed; his fear was even easier to read on a borrowed face. "I promise, I'll put on a good show."

Lucius touched the spilled potion with his wand, transfiguring it into a Gryffindor badge. "Yes." He stepped back. "Crucio." Wormtail fell to the floor, screaming and writhing. The pale Weasley skin went paler, then bloomed with red. "Yes, I think you will."

* * * * * * * * *

The girl was above, in the dungeon proper. Robed and masked, he climbed the steep stair to the cell, where MacNair, now masked as well, stood guard. He touched the lock with his wand and the door swung open. In the dark, he could just make out the pale oval of the girl's face.

"So. Miss Virginia Weasley." The door shut behind him with a thud. He gestured to the wall sconces, and the room was awash with torchlight; it showed him a slight young girl, with hair redder even than Lily Potter's had been. MacNair had taken her wand, and apparently all her outer garments had been lost in the search; she wore her uniform blouse and skirt and, heavy and incongruous, a pair of scuffed and worn snow boots on her feet. She looked about fifteen, long-legged and unfinished. Coltish, despite her round breasts. He let his gaze travel up to her face, her wide, scared eyes and firmly-set jaw. He smiled under the mask. "A pleasure."

"Who are you?" She scrambled to her feet, backing away from him. Her voice was high with tension, but it did not tremble.

"You aren't to know, my dear. Not yet." He followed her, step for step. "Even among ourselves, we wear the mask, until our lord deems we would do better to know our compatriots' faces." She came up against the wall. He took one more step, until she had to tilt her head to look up. "You will soon have a mask of your own, Miss Weasley."

She was breathing rapidly. He backed away slightly; there was no point in making her panic yet. "What do you mean? What are you going to do?"

"To initiate you. You are to be inducted into the circle tonight." He caught her chin with one finger, held her eyes on his. "Lord Voldemort does you great honor, child. He seldom grants the Mark to one so young." Indeed, even Malfoy's brat did not yet wear the Mark. He could count on the fingers of one hand the recruits he had taken so young: Evan Rosier. Deirdre Lestrange. Bartemius Crouch. Severus Snape.

She wrenched her head away from him. "No! I won't. What makes you think I would?"

"Oh, my dear child." He laid a hand on her red hair; she tossed her head like a pony shaking off flies, but the wall was at her back and she couldn't escape him. "We have heard all about how well you served the Dark Lord four years ago." She froze. He stroked her hair, gently and slowly. "Surely, you'll find it an easy thing to serve him again, having been so close to him once before. Easier by far than leaving his service." He could feel her trembling. "Would you have given yourself to him so completely, had he not spoken to something within you? Had you not had some deep affinity for him, and his power, and his purpose?"

Persuasive though he knew he could be, he meant only to unsettle the girl; whatever affinity she might have had with his adolescent self, that boy was long dead. Still, he could tell his words had hit home; a shudder went through her, stilling her trembling and halting her breath for a moment. She looked up at him, her face set and blank. "Never. I won't. Not ever."

He stepped away, letting his hand trail through her hair as it fell. "Well." He rapped on the door of the cell. "If I cannot persuade you, perhaps someone else can."

The door opened from outside and Lucius entered, also masked and robed, pushing his bound charge before him at wandpoint. "Ron!" The girl leaped forward; he pulled her back by the collar, twisted her arms up behind her back and held her against his body.

"Ginny!" He had forgotten what a good actor Wormtail could be, at need: 'Ron' looked up at his sister in a most convincing display of shock and horror, and then began straining at his bonds with renewed energy. "Let her go, you fucking bastards!"

"Language, Mr. Weasley," Lucius drawled. "Do you always speak so crudely before your young sister?" He prodded Wormtail with his wand, adding a short, wordless curse-- Algio, most likely-- and Wormtail fell, landing awkwardly on his bound hands.

"Now, Miss Weasley, you can agree to our proposal now, while your brother still has all his wits about him--"

"Which isn't saying much," Lucius added, under his breath but still audible.

"--or you can continue to refuse." He nodded to Lucius.

Lucius raised his wand. "Crucio."

Wormtail played it very well. In the pauses Lucius gave him between bouts-- pauses exquisitely timed; Lucius could extend a round of Cruciatus longer, without causing permanent damage, than any of his other servants, perhaps even than he himself could-- he squared his jaw and looked up at his sister. "Don't do it! Whatever they want, don't agree to it," he said. And then, when the blood vessels began to burst in his palms and around his eyes, and the girl began to scream that they were killing him, killing him, he looked her in the eyes and gasped, "Ginny, whatever it is they want, I'm not worth it."

Wormtail fell back against the stone floor, gasping. The girl looked up at him, her face hardening; he saw speculation in her eyes. Wormtail lifted his head from the floor. "Ginny."

"Let him go."

"Ginny, don't!"

"Let him go, and I'll do whatever you want."

"Ginny--"

Lucius kicked Wormtail's stomach, knocking the wind out him. "Be silent!"

He smiled again under the mask, knowing it would show in his eyes, in his voice. "I'm so glad you've seen reason, Miss Weasley."

She insisted on seeing him to safety before the ceremony. The hour was nearly over-- if indeed Draco Malfoy's Polyjuice would hold for a complete hour-- and so he did not argue the point. The girl would not renege, he was sure; having seen what the Cruciatus could do, she would not be eager to taste it herself. The four of them walked down the dungeon passage to the cell Malfoy kept empty as an Apparation point. Malfoy took down the few wards. "Can you Apparate, Mr. Weasley?"

He watched the girl's face for any show of surprise as Wormtail nodded. No matter if the real Ron Weasley couldn't, as long as he could convince her now that he'd kept the ability secret. But unlicensed Apparation was apparently known to be one of Weasley's skills; the girl did not so much as blink.

Lucius, playing his role to the hilt, pressed his wand into the hollow of Wormtail's freckled throat. "Do you know what this place is?" Wormtail shook his head. "I hope you're telling the truth. Because if the wards register any unexpected visitor within a mile of these walls, your sister's life is forfeit. Do you understand?" He nodded. "Good. Now go."

Wormtail caught the girl's eye, stammered her name. "Promise you'll come back in one piece. Promise, Ginny!" And vanished, to the refrain of the girl's murmured "I will, I will."

Vanished, and left nothing behind, to his master's relief; he had not been certain that Wormtail would be capable of Apparating after a prolonged cruciation. Well, if he'd splinched himself all over the Manor lawn, that was Malfoy's lookout; the girl concerned him now. He peered out from under the mask as she took in a deep breath and lifted her chin.

"All right," she said. "You've kept your end of the bargain. I'll keep mine."

She was a brave one, this child. Brave and stupid, like all her House and her family. It did not endear her to him, but it amused him somewhat. He was smiling again as he took her arm and rolled up her left sleeve. "Did you have any doubts on that score, my dear?"

* * * * * * * * *

He took her back to the cell, had her sit down cross-legged on the pallet, resting her arm on the stool that was the only other furnishing. He could have given the Mark with a wandless spell, but not without revealing more of his power than was wise. She must not suspect, she must think him only a Death Eater, only a servant of the Dark Lord. She must enter in to the rite unsuspecting, thinking it only a part of the initiation; whatever he had said about deep affinities and her service to his younger self, he knew better than to think that this child-- this Weasley, this Gryffindor, this friend of the Boy Who Lived-- would give up her power to him willingly.

So, he would do this the long way.

He traced the outline of the Mark with the point of his wand, green fire sparking in its wake. Her arm was tense, muscles clenched hard and tight under his hands; as he drew, slowly, on her skin it began to shake, and he had to grasp her shoulder with his other hand to hold her still. When the design was complete he spared a glance for her face; a muscle had begun to jump at the corner of her jaw, and her eyes were brimming.

He followed the wand with a short-bladed knife, tracing the pattern into her skin. He cut just deeply enough for the blood to well up, but he knew from her gasp that she felt it, felt the magic sinking in, cutting straight to the bone and through it. He made a slash across his own arm, his own Mark, letting the blood well up-- blood still thicker and darker than it should be, he saw-- and crossed his arm over hers, trapping his wand between. He spoke a brief incantation.

Searing heat, as the Mark branded itself into the girl's flesh. He could feel it now, the connection between them, a conduit for magical energy. His servants would have felt it too-- a twinge, a jolt of power. An enlargement, as one more life was twined with theirs.

The girl was clutching her wrist, staring down at her arm. Her tears had finally spilled down her cheeks. They blotched her face, made her look even younger. She looked up. "All right. I did what I said. I've kept my word."

He took her arm, stroking his thumb over the Mark; she flinched. "Why, so you have." He made no move to release her.

She tugged against his grip. "But-- I thought." She took in a breath. "You've finished. Haven't you?"

He shook his head. "Oh, no, my dear. The initiation isn't nearly over yet." With his other hand, he began to unbutton her blouse.

He had gambled that she would know nothing of the actual initiation rites, that none of his servants had turned their coats quite enough to make such matters public. He had been right; she whimpered, she flinched, but did not challenge him, did not say she'd agreed to no such thing. And even the whimpering, she halted, after he took her chin in his hand and hissed, "Be silent, girl! There are others who'd be glad to complete the ceremony in my place. He that brought you here, for one." With a terrified glance to the door, she quieted. Under his mask, he smiled; MacNair was still a fool, but he had his uses.

She seemed to shrink, to withdraw into herself, as he unfastened her blouse and removed her skirt; she moved, as he guided her, letting him touch where he would. Not resisting, and using all her concentration and courage to not resist, to tamp down the fear and revulsion he knew were there. He drew a line down her throat, between her breasts, still in the lacy harness he hadn't bothered to remove, down her belly. She bit her lip.

Even after the blood of three virgins, his cauldron-born flesh was dull and insensitive; her skin under his hands felt smooth, even smoother than distant, long-ago memory told him a young girl's skin ought to feel. He thought that between the back of her hand and the inside of her arm, between her shoulder and the slope of her breast, there should be a change, some difference of texture or warmth or softness, but his hands could not make such subtle distinctions. He could feel that she trembled; that her muscles were knotted tight.

It was more than he would have felt, once. The blood rites had given him senses that his newborn body had lacked, had layered nerves and veins between his skin and bones and tough sinews. For a moment, he considered simply calling for MacNair and using the girl as he had her predecessors-- there was plenty of blood in her, he could see it gathering in two high spots on her white cheeks, even if her could not feel its race under her skin-- but he did not.

He was still not certain that Malfoy's plan would succeed-- she would speak her part of the rite, that he was convinced of, but whether there was enough power in her to restore him fully, whether the Mark he'd given her unwilling was a strong enough bond to carry that power, he did not know. But he had decided to try it, and persisted with it, chiefly out of curiosity: to know the full measure of this body, what it could feel, what desires it could know, what pleasure it could take.

The girl was not the best object for that test. Her fists were clenched, white-knuckled, and blood seeped out of one where she'd pierced herself with a fingernail. Her whole body had locked up, muscles twisting and knotting; it resisted, as she did not.

Best to get this over with. He unfastened his own clothing. He was hard, at least, though his arousal, too, was at a distance, something from another life. He parted her thighs and settled himself between them. She turned her head to the side and shut her eyes tight.

In this, too, he knew that his senses were dulled. He was glad of it; had he been more sensitive, he thought her body's resistance might have pained him: she was tight, not slick at all, and her choked-off noises of pain and fear were more annoying than arousing. It took him time to work himself in, and once he had he felt little but relief that he had kept his erection.

He held himself there for a moment, catching his breath, and then turned the girl's head to face him. "Open your eyes." She did; her pupils were wide and black. "Now repeat after me. "Macula ianuaficio."

"Macula ianuaficio."

He felt the Mark flare under his skin, the connection between them opened by her words, baring her magic to him. He withdrew and thrust again, a little more easily this time. "Magiae iunctusumus."

She repeated it, and power flowed into him. She was powerful, more than she knew: powerful enough to restore him fully, and as he continued the incantations, that power opened to him, flowed through him, his for the taking, the keeping. He could feel it burning in the Mark, and knew that his Death Eaters would feel it too, sense the increase in all their strengths, as he grew stronger.

"Maculaedomino maculancilla. Maculaianua magiamando."

Stronger with the girl's magic, and ever more vital and alive. He had found a rhythm now, thrust and withdrawal, call and response. As each cantrip echoed back from her mouth, he felt his skin flush and burn with blood, with life, felt his heart beat quicker and fiercer.

"Maculaedomino spiritumihi."

Her tight heat gripped him closely. She had begun to breathe hard.

"Maculaedomino sanguimihi."

For the first time since his rebirth, he felt his arousal as more than just a mechanical excitement-- it had seeped under his skin, seized his whole body. The flow of power out of her body, through the Mark, into his veins, was intoxicating.

"Maculaedomino veneramihi."

Sweat had broken out on her forehead, her upper lip; he wished he could remove his mask and taste it. Instead, he traced a bead of it across her brow with his fingers. Not unbroken marble smoothness beneath them, now, but the tiny irregularities of mortal flesh. The coolness of evaporation, the coolness of her skin, with all its blood blazing in her cheeks. He twisted his hand in her hair.

"Maculaedomino virgiamihi."

Her voice, which had parroted back the first cantrips without understanding, held a note of comprehension. That was impossible, surely. The rite was ancient magic, Dark magic, nothing taught at Hogwarts. "Maculaedomino vimihi."

"Maculaedomino--" She bit her lip, worried it between her teeth.

And yet there were light magics based on the same principles, the same roots. Perhaps she could decipher enough to guess the intent. He thrust harder, quicker, clutched at her shoulder with his fingernails, trying to distract her. "Vimihi!"

Or else she felt her own power spiraling away, through the Mark and into him, and somehow knew through that connection that he meant to drain her dry. She was silent for a beat too long, her eyes unfocused, searching inward. And then she was shoving at his chest, trying to push him away, and screaming: "I won't say it! I won't. You can't make me, I won't say it I won't I won't."

There was nothing he could do; the end of the rite hinged upon her words. And her blood was no use to him now. Angered-- and that, too, he felt all through his body, in his veins, hot in his skin-- he held her down, grasping her shoulder and hipbone hard while he finished. Felt his flesh begin to deaden again, felt her power leaving him: without the final cantrip, he could borrow her strength, her life, but not hold them.

He pulled out of her and stood up. "Well then." She had risen to her knees, backing away from him; he took her by the loose fronts of her blouse and hauled her to her feet. "If you won't say the words, then what am I do with you, Miss Weasley?"

Her voice was small and unsteady, but she looked him in the face. "Kill me, I suppose. Whatever you want." She choked back a laugh. "I can't stop you."

To kill her now would be sport for his servants, but no more. Her blood had lost its virtue; and sending her back, bleeding from his use and branded with his Mark, would be just as hard a blow to those who waited for her. No, he would not kill her.

He rapped on the door of the cell, and MacNair opened it. "Fetch Miss Weasley's wand." She looked up, surprised; she had picked up her skirt and was dressing herself. "And her other things, if you can find them."

MacNair left, in evident surprise but with enough sense not to question him. He stayed by the door while she dressed, right down to the too-large boots. MacNair returned in a short time with a wand, a winter robe, a red-and-gold scarf. The ridiculous hat. He took them, gave them to her, waited while she shrugged into the robe, stowed her wand and the cap in its pockets.

She was white in a way that suggested shock. He could keep her, let her recover, let her come to an appreciation of her captors-- it would happen, he'd seen it many times. He was tempted. But the risks of keeping a live hostage-- so much harder to conceal than the girls, so quickly disposed of, MacNair brought him-- would not be worth the result: a half-trained witch, her power beaten down along with her will.

No, she was Weasley's child, Potter's friend, Dumbledore's charge; he would send her back to her own. And now, while she was still ambulatory.

He drew his wand and spelled his own traces from her body-- blood was not the only fluid with a use in magic-- and then walked her to the Apparation point in silence. Then he pulled her close, with a hand on her shoulder-- she jumped at the touch-- and rolled her left sleeves back to bare the new Mark, still angry red and tender. He traced it, slowly, with a fingertip.

He had had other far-flung servants. Other prodigals. Wormtail had crept back to him, after so many years hiding from his wrath, and found him forgiving. Karkaroff, even as he had died, had begged for a chance to prove himself-- and he had been sincere as only a man under Veritaserum can be. And poor Severus, brooding in his dungeons, in the circle, and yet out of it. Severus, who had betrayed him, at least once, and yet still craved to return to his master's side-- he knew it, he saw it the man's face each time he gave him audience. And in time, what would he not be willing to do, to regain his master's favor?

He brushed his thumb across the Mark, and looked down into the girl's wide and staring eyes. "If you will not perform the rite, you are of no use to me, Miss Weasley." She sagged in relief. "At present."

She swallowed. "What are you going to do?"

"Send you home. You can Apparate, I assume?" She nodded, and he made a mental note; if the younger Weasleys had mastered the skill, surely the Potter brat had learned it as well.

He took down the wards, still not letting go of her arm. He touched the Mark, making it flash green for a moment. Then he leaned down and pressed it with the porcelain lips of his mask, a cold ceramic kiss. He stroked her hair out of her face. "I will send for you when I have need of you, Miss Weasley-- Ginny." He stepped back, and she swayed a little on her feet when he released her. "Now go."

She vanished. He could feel it when she reappeared in Hogsmeade, a twinge behind his Mark, a thrill of life into his nerves, a vibration of one narrow strand of his web.


End file.
